Home: A work in progress

I've been on decluttering mode for a couple of months, and I think our home is starting to look a little better. I've learnt that it is more about declutttering, and less about organizing: the home always looks neater when you have less stuff to deal with. However, while I totally understand how minimalism might work for us, I love my vintage and pretty things too much. So what works for us is a balance of less stuff, while keeping the things we love. Here are some of our happy little spaces, which encourage me to keep on pruning our belongings:

Our kitchen shelf, with a collection of random things.
Those cookbooks contain the best chicken stock recipe we've ever tasted,
and the tiffin carrier is a recent find from our trip to Penang.

Junior J made and put up a welcome sign to his bed. 

I have a huge soft spot for globes.
The brown one was a flea market find in Belgium.

The dining table, on a neat day. Most days, it is filled with all sorts of things,
since we homeschool at the table and we eat there.

I think one of the best things is seeing how our spaces grow and work to fit our family's needs. We recently cleared an area near the baby cot in our room and set-up a reading corner for the older boys, where they could read while waiting for me to be done with feeding or settling baby J. This corner is still a work in progress, but it is well used, and seeing them reading together warms my heart.

One morning I went off to prepare breakfast, and came back to see them like this.
Junior J was reading to his brothers!

Packing usually is done after the boys are asleep, so I hardly get any time to tackle the boys' room, unless they are out with the gramps. Those times, I usually have a little helper who investigates everything I am doing:

Yes, he had to crawl into the cupboard to explore. No, I didn't put him in there for a photo.

And that disaster of a room we call our study? You've seen the before shots, and here is the "in-between" shot of that same room:

It is most definitely looking better. The other half is still full of boxes and piles of paper, but the home is lighter in terms of clutter, and that makes my heart feel lighter too! 

All in all, I guess our homes are all works in progress, and it's lovely to see how the rooms change and grow with us!